Copies instead of references.

[lrh9]

Lately I've been writing a lot of code involving the creation of new objects, and I quickly come to find that Python almost always creates a reference to an object instead of a new object. I understand the importance of conserving memory usage, but in this instance I actually need a true copy.

My problem is that I have yet to find anything in Python that can quickly generate a true copy of all objects. I am aware of the copy module, but it will not copy certain objects I need to copy. I have had some success experimenting with creating a new, blank object and initializing it to be the same as another object, but this is a sometimes lengthy and complex process. My question is if there is a feature that allows programmers to easily copy objects using a simple assignment.

Python is a good language, but it seems like its lacking an intuitive way to copy objects.

[vegaseat]

Only mutable objects are passed by reference, since they can change internally. So, assignment will not create a true copy, just an alias. The module copy handles many mutable objects. However there are more complex objects than cannot be easily copied. For instance a recursive situation.

[ihatehippies]

as someone here once showed me:

x = [1, 2, 3]

y = x[:] # y is now a copy of x

[lrh9]

as someone here once showed me:

x = [1, 2, 3]

y = x[:] # y is now a copy of x

That only works on lists, but thanks for pointing that out.

[lrh9]

Only mutable objects are passed by reference, since they can change internally. So, assignment will not create a true copy, just an alias. The module copy handles many mutable objects. However there are more complex objects than cannot be easily copied. For instance a recursive situation.

Right. The copy module itself lists some of the objects it doesn't copy. I don't know why it would be so hard to create a set of functions and classes to handle the copy of objects. Almost any object or data type in Python is in fact a first class object.

[Lardmeister]

as someone here once showed me:

x = [1, 2, 3]

y = x[:] # y is now a copy of x

This will not work for nested lists.
Example

x = [1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]

y = x[:]

x[1] = 99
print( x )  # [1, 99, [3, 4, 5]]
print( y )  # [1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]    okay

x[2][1] = 33
print( x )  # [1, 99, [3, 33, 5]]
print( y )  # [1, 2, [3, 33, 5]]   oh no

[snippsat]

This will not work for nested lists.
Example

No problem,kidding this one was not so easy.
Search and think,did find a soultion.

def unshared_copy(inList):
    if isinstance(inList, list):
        return list( map(unshared_copy, inList) )
    return inList

inlist = [1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]
copy_list = unshared_copy(inlist)

print inlist
print copy_list
print
print id(inlist)
print id(copy_list)
print inlist == copy_list
print
inlist[1] = 99
print inlist
print copy_list
print
inlist[2][1] = 33
print inlist
print copy_list
'''
[1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]
[1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]

15060344
15060464
True

[1, 99, [3, 4, 5]]
[1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]

[1, 99, [3, 33, 5]]
[1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]
'''

Have you looked at or tried if deepcopy works for you irh9?
http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/copy/index.html

[lrh9]

I am aware of the copy module, but it will not copy certain objects I need to copy.

See my initial post.

[vegaseat]

Can you give an example of what those certain objects are?

[vegaseat]

This will not work for nested lists.
Example

x = [1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]

y = x[:]

x[1] = 99
print( x )  # [1, 99, [3, 4, 5]]
print( y )  # [1, 2, [3, 4, 5]]    okay

x[2][1] = 33
print( x )  # [1, 99, [3, 33, 5]]
print( y )  # [1, 2, [3, 33, 5]]   oh no

This is an example where copy.deepcopy() will work just fine.

[lrh9]

Can you give an example of what those certain objects are?

So far the only objects I've been interested in generating true copies of are module objects and function objects.

I learned how to create a module object, so I was going to learn how to create a custom importer. I'm probably still going to do this because it will allow me to incorporate some additional features.

However, when I attempted to create a true copy of a function object, it failed miserably and was too complex for me to figure out. deepcopy claims to be able to copy function objects, but when I used it, I did not get the desired behavior.